Blips: Girly Games

Source: Girly video games: rewriting a history of pink
Author: Leigh Alexander
Site: The Guardian

Back when the NES was a current-gen console, my whole family shared it, though my older brother and I played it way more then anyone else. We had dozens of games, including two "girly games" that were supposed to be mainly for my little sister to play (she was pretty little at the time too). However, I still think my brother and I spent more time playing Barbie and The Little Mermaid than she ever did, even though she felt particularly betrayed when we eventually traded them in at Funcoland for newer titles. The Little Mermaid is a solid sidescrolling action game, and Barbie is a super weird, surprisingly tricky action-adventure title, and had I not had a sister, I doubt I'd have ever played them. That'd be kind of shame, seeing as "girl's games" are routinely dismissed as trite, poorly made, and unworthy of serious consideration. Yet ironically, Barbie and The Little Mermaid are actually pretty interesting.

In 2012, Rachel Simone Weil founded the Femicom Museum, an archive of games containing feminine design elements. Some of this archive was shown in a recent exhibition at The Visual Arts Center in Austin, Texas, where Weil constructed a kids bedroom TV setup as an image of an imaginary past, serving as a shrine to girl games and pop culture of the 90s. In a recent profile in The Guardian covering the show, Weil states that "works by or for women are so often deemed marginal or embarrassing or inadequate or inappropriate, and therefore omitted from history. And then decades later, we're wondering, ‘Where were the female writers, politicians, artists? Where were the girly games?" Weil's exhibition and the Femicom Museum come out of a desire to preserve a facet of gaming history that, even in the 90s, wasn't really given the time of day in the Western press or larger cultural recognition of the medium. Girly games are still around to some degree, and they have a genealogy. It's great that Weil is intent on providing resources for better understanding that lineage.

Blips: New York's Finest

Source: The NYU MFA Showcase was not your average student art show
Author: Dan Solberg
Site: Kill Screen

Just putting out a bit of self promotion here: I covered the recent NYU Game Center Student Showcase for Kill Screen, and I got to play a ton of inspiring games and talk to some cool people. It was my first MFA games show, and it was pretty fun. I'd definitely attend another.

Anyway, so I ended up leaving some of my personal experience with NYU Game Center out of the article because it wasn't the proper tone, but part of the meaning behind that opening line about a lot changing in two years is that it's also the length of time I've been living in New York City. My time learning my way around the boroughs and trying to build up some kind of games coverage portfolio ran parallel with the the Game Center's debut MFA class that just graduated. Throughout the past two years, I've attended a bunch of video game events (many of them Game Center related), held all over the city, and actually got a feel for what a cultural community around games can feel like. I came here for art, but what I ended up getting the most out of NYC was games, and I think that's a testament to the openness and inclusivity at work in New York's gaming scene. Not to say that video games in NYC is a homogenous entity, but there are definitely common threads.

Now I'm getting ready to leave town, head back to the Midwest and teach art. Having spent two years in New York immersed in games, and the 2.5 years prior in DC working in informal education, I've never felt more prepared to enter the austere world of collegiate art education and try my best to offer an alternative experience to my students. When I came out of art school, I hoped, like many of my classmates, that I could find work doing something, anything that was remotely connected to art, knowing that being a full-time artist is just not in the cards. I feel tremendously lucky in this regard (despite my inability to land an art museum job in NYC, though I've interviewed at most of them) that the experiences I've had have led me to be so uniquely prepared for my position this Fall. I've spent a lot my time in NYC cursing this place, but the gaming community here was always a bright spot, and it made my stay here something I truly value.

Blips: Installation Puzzle

Source: The Possibilities and the Pitfalls of the Video Game Exhibition
Author: Nicholas O'Brien
Site: Rhizome

Do video games belong in museums? This is the core question Nicholas O'Brien is asking in an op-ed for Rhizome. I don't see a definitive yes or no answer here since sometimes games can be perfect fits for museums, and other times they aren't. Having seen a few of the bigger, more mainstream museums like the Smithsonian's American Art Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York tackle video game displays it varies by game as to how well their approaches worked. When the curatorial approach is to treat games with the standardized format used for the majority of other artistic mediums on display in the museum (work displayed as is with a wall placard of vital stats), certain types of games will benefit, while others will seem terribly neglected.

They say a typical museum-goer averages something like 5 seconds with an individual work. Games born out of an arcade tradition are likely to thrive in a museum environment because they are literally built to attract the attention of passersby, and their gameplay is constructed around an immediate experience that takes only a short time to mechanically comprehend. Control schemes for arcade-style games are also more intuitive for those unfamiliar with a particular game or modern home controllers.

However, this same treatment, when applied to Myst or any other games with layered narratives and puzzles, does the game a tremendous disservice. Even assuming the game is programmed for easy restarting for each new player, many of these games take 30 minutes or more to truly get moving to the point where its core play experience begins. And in some ways this is why we don't see many novels or full-length feature films in general museum exhibitions; the majority of visitors are there for a "museum experience" and that's comes with a certain set of expectations. Typically this involves a desire to see many different works within a matter of hours, and choosing a select few of particular interest to engage with more deeply along the way. The thing is, people like to choose these works for themselves rather than the medium dictating how much time they need to engage with something before it can "click" with them.

I don't think every visitor has to actually play games on display to appreciate them so long as they're able to understand what's happening as a spectator. Still, special attention needs to be paid for certain types of games to make more sense in a museum context, and what this is will vary by game. Not all video art makes sense on a standard flatscreen monitor, and by that same token, though most games to function within a standardized context in a home environment, that universality does not translate to the museum setting. Perhaps this is an area where museums could take cues from gaming trade shows where a "vertical slice" of the game is offered instead of the full article. Additionally, trade shows have attendants on hand to assist players in understanding the controls and ensuring that the installation is functioning correctly (another huge hurdle for high traffic institutions). Or perhaps a totally different type of installation would be more suitable for a particular type of game. How about one that uses a "black box" space to envelop players and spectators in a game's immersive, surround sound environment? That might work for a solemn, contemplative game like Proteus, but might make a lot less sense for local multiplayer games where social interaction with fellow players takes precedent.

I still want that "museum experience" when I go to a museum, and what that means for games is that I'd like my experience with games in a museum to feel unique to the setting. I own copies of several Katamari Damacy games; I don't get anything unique when the museum installation of that game a is a stand-up replica of my setup at home. I can look at photographs of paintings, sculptures, and video stills in books and on my computer, but being in the presence of those actual objects in a museum is a special experience that can't be had anywhere else. This is more difficult with games due to their general status as widely available commercial products, but if museums aren't going to try and make the experience of games in their halls special as well, then perhaps it's best to leave that task for those who will.

Blips: Hidden Fortress

Source: Dwarf Fortress NYC: ASCII Wallpaper, Conceptual Maps and The Landscape Of The Museum
Author: Eron Rauch
Site: Video Game Tourism

I've written about the video games in MoMA's Applied Design exhibition before, but where I focused on the interaction implementation of the playable games on display, there were other games that couldn't be touched. The way MoMA installed different kinds of controls with different games came off as experimental, and the same adjective could be applied to their strategy with the non-interactive games. A Let's Play video of The Sims, plays in place of live code, while EVE Online gets an original dual monitor video display that explains how the game functions and its immense scope. No two games seem to be given the exact same treatment, which is a bit odd considering the dry, uniform manner in which the games have been installed.

In all this, Dwarf Fortress seems to get short shrift. The ASCII mountain colony simulation game is, quite honestly, beyond me. I've watched players stumble though it, read harrowing accounts of thrilling moments from diehard players, and been "introduced" to the game through several articles aimed at the general non-gamer populace, but never had the desire to actually play it. And I think it's safe to assume that most museum visitors haven't played it either. So, the fact that the game sits in the back room as a short, audioless video loop with a bit of accompanying wall text doesn't seem to do it justice. I find it hard to imagine that anyone who hasn't played Dwarf Fortress will walk away with an appreciation for what the game does, and even less so, a desrie to go home and try it for themselves.

In the link I sourced at the top of this post, Eron Rauch dissects why he was disappointed in the installation of Dwarf Fortress in Applied Design, and offers a few suggestions for how it could be done better by taking advice from another MoMA exhibition (irony!). Even though I follow the logic of curator Paola Antonelli's decision for a sparse installation, free of material nostalgia outside of the games (code) themselves, for those unplayable displays, something else needs to exist to fill in the gaps. While this seems to have been taken into account for The Sims and EVE, Dwarf Fortress has been left to fend for itself, when we all know it's incomprehensible without a guide and a whole lot of spare time. It feels like MoMA has the answers to the questions about displaying such an unruly game, they just didn't follow though on them.

One could make the argument for the current Dwarf Fortress display at MoMA as one that avoids heavy-handed curatorial voice in favor of the work speaking for itself. After all, this is the same treatment given to the majority of works in the museum: a painting hangs on the wall with a bit of supplemental text to its side. To visitors not already in the know, this kind of display is a puzzle, it's own kind of game in a way, where the sentences, dates, imagery, materials, and everything else is taken into account as evidence in support of an eventual interpretation that the viewer can call their own (lest they be plagued by trying to figure out what the artist meant). The problem with this approach in Dwarf Fortress is that, given its unplayable display form, the amount of information the viewer has to work with is incomplete, and not enough has been done to make up the deficit.

Behold! The Art of Video Games

This past weekend the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) opened The Art of Video Games: a history-spanning account of the life of the medium.  It's a big coming out party for games-as-art champions who get to see the games they love stand in the limelight on a national stage.  The show was put together with great care and respect by guest curator Chris Melissinos, but perhaps the most significant thing about The Art of Video Games is that it exists at all.

The title of the exhibition is so purely descriptive it seems like it should be the subtitle to something written in leetspeak.  I imagine the reasons for such a bland header are multifold.  There's a wide audience of museum goers who know nothing about games and the straightforward title lets them know what they're in for.  It plays it safe, which could be used as a descriptor of the entire show.  It isn't surprising that SAAM would want to avoid controversy, especially in the wake of the hot water their housemate, the National Portrait Gallery, found themselves in with their Hide/Seek exhibition.  Also, the Smithsonian can be a stuffy place, and The Art of Video Games is a sign of goodwill on the part of games advocates who are willing to keep the crazy in the box in exchange for a solid dose of recognition.

3-channel video showing gamers' faces as they play

The exhibition consists of three rooms: a "visual art of games" display, a hands-on arcade space, and an archival console timeline.  Aside from the hilarious video footage of gamers' faces as they play, the initial room seems geared towards showing the visual appeal and traditional craft of game aesthetics.  Concept art and storyboards are installed salon-style, and a 5-channel display shows the graphical leaps in video games hardware over the past few decades.  I imagine the first room gives non-gamers something to latch onto that's a bit more familiar for an art museum.

Moving forward, visitors enter a wide open space with a handful of large projected games to play, each contained within a giant half-cylinder "arcade cabinet."  The whole room is aglow in purple, blue, and black stenciled lights, offering an aesthetic that's very roller rink/lazer tag arena.  During the opening weekend there were lines for the multi-generationally recognizable Pac-Man and Super Mario Bros.  People were playing Myst and The Secret of Monkey Island too, but the nature of those adventure titles made them more suitable for a less crowded setting.  Along with Flower, these are the only playable games in the exhibition.

A giant playable version of the original Pac-Man

The third space, the console timeline, seems like the centerpiece of the show.  In this room, again bathed in purple, vertical structures display video game consoles individually behind glass and pair them with four games each.  The games are divided evenly into Action, Target, Adventure, and Tactics categories, offering a better glance at genre evolutions than necessarily the best or most important games on a particular system.  Each tower has a button per game that plays a video with voiceover describing why the game is of significance and additional contextual details.  Unfortunately, some of the game selections feel like an unnecessary stretch to prove their worth.  The video for TRON: Maze-Atron even admits that the game wasn't very good, yet, here it is.  It may have been a noble effort to democratize the selection process, but it's difficult to see that as a plus given some of the resulting picks; I'm looking at you Worms Armageddon.

It's frustrating to see an exhibition of video games both spread itself too thin and miss essential pieces at the same time, but The Art of Video Games does just that.  Everyone could have their list of impossible-to-satisfy omissions, but I find it hard to stand behind the absence of all fighting games and, by extension, arcades.  On the other end of the spectrum, the broad survey of games is rooted in understanding chronological history more than communicating a clear argument for why we should view games as artworks.  Perhaps "games are art" is the inherent assumption, given the context of the exhibition in an art museum, but I was hoping for a little more intellectual rumination on the subject.

Video game history on display in chronological order

I love video games, but I realize this show is only partially meant for me.  I don't go into an art exhibition expecting to adore every piece, but I do need to find resonance in the core conceits of the artists and curators who bring everything together.  This is a sentiment that The Art of Video Games ultimately achieves.   Melissinos has painted a history of games that may not be a mirror reflection of actual events, but it is a narrative that makes sense, and is actually digestible.  The show is a foot in the door for the medium that will hopefully lead to increasingly daring efforts in the future.

The opening of The Art of Video Games was supplemented by talks and panel discussions as part of Gamefest, covered here previously.

Recap: Gamefest Day 2

Opening this weekend at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) is the Art of Video Games exhibition, curated by Chris Melissinos.  I'll be taking a deeper look at the show itself soon, but in the meantime, SAAM has been putting on a series of events they're calling Gamefest that lasts all weekend.  For Saturday this consisted of a couple lectures, live music and games, and a film screening (The King of Kong).  I'll focus on the two auditorium discussions of the day.

A Conversation with Hideo Kojima

I wasn't able to physically attend this talk since tickets were claimed in advance and the line that showed up for standby was pretty huge.  Luckily it's available to view online, which is the version I'll just briefly touch on.

I don't think "conversation" was really the correct term to describe the Kojima event, since it was really just the Japanese developer answering Melissinos' questions through a translator for an hour.  It's difficult to overcome language barriers in these kinds of situations, and as such, it's best to go into a talk like this with metered expectations.   Still, it's cool to see Hideo Kojima in person.  I love his games and his sense of style.

Topics ranged from original inspirations, to qualities of great game designers, to the difference between games and films.  There was nothing super surprising, especially for audience members who've been following Kojima and/or Metal Gear for a long time.  He wouldn't reveal anything about his next projects except to say that he's working on "something," and that the player will be more in control of the narrative pacing in contrast to the Metal Gear Solid series.  

There was no mention of Transfarring.

It’s All in the Design with Robin Hunicke

Indie studio thatgamecompany has been enjoying quite a bit of limelight at the Art of Video Games.  Producer Robin Hunicke is a producer who worked on their latest title, Journey.  Before that she was with EA for Sims 2, My Sims, and Boom Blox.  She spoke about what she sees as the core mechanics of game design, and how those points apply to people lives outside of games.

Hunicke broke her design goals down into 4 categories: Exploration, Expression, Experimentation, and Experience.  She related these to various points in her game development career, making sure to note how not only are these goals for what a game should play like, but also how the development process should operate.  She sees great leadership coming from someone who acts as a "force multiplier."  This would be an individual who knows how to ask the right questions of their team, and trusts them to answer those questions by doing great work.  The leader can't be an overlord.  She recognized Steven Spielberg, the create force behind Boom Blox, as an individual who is a master of this force multiplier technique.

Knowing that her 4 design goals make for a satisfying work environment, it makes sense that creating content that performs extraordinarily in those categories would make for rewarding game experiences.  They aren't just game experiences though, since game experiences are increasingly part of our life experiences.  It makes sense to make the two more successfully intertwine, meaning individuals can aspire to better meet those design goals n both virtual and real-world fronts.

Development on Journey was also discussed in the context of the 4 design goals.  Hunicke explained that the team had at one point built a variety of puzzles that required the two people playing the game to work together; think ladder lowering, dual switch pressing, and the like.  This was found to be incredibly stifling to the openness of the design concept and was ultimately scrapped.  It felt too much like you're completing a test instead of actually playing around in the world.  Those 4 design goals are really 4 different factors of play that, once combined, can make for an immersive experience.

Recap: Gamefest Day 1

Opening this weekend at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) is the Art of Video Games exhibition, curated by Chris Melissinos.  I'll be taking a deeper look at the show itself soon, but in the meantime, SAAM has been putting on a series of events they're calling Gamefest that lasts all weekend.  For Friday this consisted of a couple panel discussions, a lecture, and a film screening (TRON).  I was able to attend all of the talky-talk events.

The Evolution of Video Games: Pioneers
Panelists (left to right): Chris Melissinos, Mike Mika, Keith Robinson, Rand Miller, and Don Daglow

First up to bat was a series of industry vets who weren't above swapping a few war stories, but offer plenty of first-hand knowledge from the dawn of the medium.  Honestly though, the pre-crash era of games is the one I'm least familiar with, so I was happy to hear about the processing power equivalents of walking 13 miles to school in the snow.  I had no idea that games were being programmed prior to the notion of the live monitor interface.  They printed out on paper!  That might have been the most stirring factoid I heard all day.

Much discussion was framed around the forward evolutions in console generations, and how new sets of constraints are introduced in each cycle.  Daglow made the association that when a new piece of hardware was introduced, it was as if someone turned off the lights in your living room, rearranged all the furniture, and left you to feel around for familiar textures.  All of the panelists echoed the notion that design constraints imposed by limited hardware may have presented significant challenges, but ultimately they were a boon to focusing creativity and keeping their minds from running totally wild.

Mika parleyed these sentiments into discussing the challenges of true emulation and homage, specifically citing his work on faux NES title Dark Void Zero.  I couldn't help but think about certain rock bands who only play with vintage gear to achieve specific classic sounds.  Others mentioned how the lack of modern paddle controls makes it very difficult for new players to understand what made a game like Warlords so much fun.

The discussion was moderated by exhibition curator Chris Melissinos who retained a positively giddy tone throughout.  He was eager to share entertaining, personal stories from his own life in between panelist prompts.  The tone of the conversations were mostly feel-good, without the usual disdain for nostalgia that accompanies art criticism.  This wasn't really the venue for that anyway.  The Pioneers group shed light on some intriguing moments in history and successfully drew parallels between the industry issues of 40 years ago and those of today.

The Evolution of Video Games: The Future
Panelists (left to right): Chris Melissinos, Mark DeLoura, Paul Barnett, Ken Levine, and Kellee Santiago

While the Pioneers panel focused on how we got to the present, the Future panel was filled with speculation about where we go next and attempts to define where in fact we currently are.  As a result there was actually some debate among the group.

Discussion sparked when Barnett suggested the idea of individualized "golden ages" for gamers.  The basic idea is that there's a range of years in your life when you are most absorbed in playing games, and most susceptible to that saturation having a significant role in your development as a person.  I don't know if that's true across the board, but definitively within certain genres and franchises.  Is there really a need to play any version of Mario Kart other than the one you originally fell in love with?  Maybe, but I doubt you'll like it as much.  Santiago argued that the increased diversity in the gaming community has led plenty of individuals to discover and understand games in more varied stages of life.

Diversity was actually a point of commonality among the panel; diversity among developer personnel, styles of games, funding models, audiences, and more.  One question from the audience spoke ill of "pretentious indie games" which Santiago later jokingly admitted to producing.  After a string of don't-like-it-don't-play-it responses, Levine smartly piped up and reassured the audience member that developers pull from a wide variety of games and other media for inspiration, and that it's likely that "hardcore game" (my quotation marks, not Levine's) developers will play something like Dear Esther and incorporate and translate some of those ideas into their future titles.  On the subject of borrowing ideas from other people's work, Barnett chimed in with a Monty Python quote for inspiration that went something like "All of my best ideas are bad ideas that someone misheard and made a good idea from."

Likewise with the notions of teamwork, sharing, and open communication being key elements of a successful development studio being touted, only DeLoura sidled with the remark that there's something significant and worthwhile to the singular vision of an artist, seen through from beginning to end.  As an artist, I was personally glad someone on the panel expressed that sentiment.  I'm all for teamwork, but for certain projects there are people who need to control everything in service of a perspective that only they can offer.  DeLoura offered Jonathan Blow's Braid as an example.

I thought we might be treated to more talk about the hot-off-the-presses Journey or the looming Bioshock Infinite, but a lot of the concepts being touched on were more "big picture" items.  This was for the best since it kept the discussions driven in directions that all of the panelists could contribute their expertise to.  I left the panel feeling like I'd actually seen some genuine intellectual discussion happen, which is what I was hoping for.  I've watched video of Levine speaking at GDC about the potential for narrative in games and read Santiago's writing about thatgamecompany's aspirations, so I went in with high hopes, which were mostly fulfilled.

Nolan Bushnell: Video Games in Retrospect

Having never seen Bushnell speak in person before, I only had the title of his lecture to draw from.  Would this be an encyclopedic history lesson?  An intimate trip down memory lane?  Turns out it was a little of both with generous helpings of kookiness and comic relief, and a general sense of wide-eyed amazement at what new generations of game makers are creating based on frameworks he helped invent.

Much like the Pioneers panel, there were some look-how-big-computers-were stuff, but I was most interested in Bushnell the businessman since he came off as particularly shrewd.  He pointed out that his company, Atari, had developed Pong, but that game had been ripped off by so many other companies that the majority of Pong machines weren't actually sold by Atari.  They counteracted this by faking the labels on the boards that they manufactured so that when competitors would look at them for copies, they'd end up putting things in the wrong places, and the boards wouldn't work at all.  They supposedly drove most all of their non-conglomerate copycats out of business with this strategy.

That's the other thing about Bushnell: he likes legendary stories, and he's certainly billed as one.  Are some of these stories myths?  We have to take his word for it I suppose, since at least the results of his endeavors are on record as facts.  I hadn't questioned anything until he mentioned the ET cartridge debacle and rumor of a desert burial repository for the unwanted titles.  I always had fun telling that story to non-gamer friends, but I don't know that I really believed it was anything but a tall tale.  On the other hand, Bushnell freely admits they had to sell Atari-Japan to Namco due to defying numerous rules and regulations out of ignorance of the country's bylaws, so why not just hop on for the ride if he's willing to go that far.

The talk wrapped up with a "ref" from Twin Galaxies and high-score king Billy Mitchell trotting out a giant video game trading card of Bushnell as an honorary award.  There was a chumminess between them and a heartfelt recognition that having an exhibition of video games in a national art museum is a truly significant step for the form.  They seemed to relish it so much that they burned right through Q/A time, which meant it dragged a bit, but in the context of this symbolic achievement, I understand wanting to hold onto that moment as long as possible.